Chapter 2425: Silence

Despite the conclusion Caelum had reached, he made no move to attack Sylas.

The Gold continued toward the gates at the same measured pace as before, neither slowing nor accelerating as the failed Madness Candidates threw themselves in his path. His three Silvers followed without questioning him, and from a distance it almost looked as though the two groups had never noticed one another at all.

**

Cheri didn’t share that impression.

By now, the tension in her face had become impossible to hide, and every few seconds her eyes shifted toward the four figures drawing closer to their path. Sylas hadn’t asked her a single question since she identified them, and judging from the lack of reaction in his expression, she wasn’t even certain he cared about what she had already told him.

Fanelei was considerably more curious.

"I’ve heard about Legacy plenty of times, but I never had much reason to look into them." She glanced toward Cheri. "Are those four really that dangerous?"

"They’re Acolytes." Cheri answered immediately, almost grateful to finally have someone taking the situation seriously. "They’re chosen from the pool of people aiming to become Professors, and outside of the Professors themselves, they’re among the most dangerous people Legacy has."

Fanelei’s brows rose slightly.

Cheri looked toward Sylas again. "We should leave."

Sylas continued walking.

"The odds that they’ll let us go if we cross paths are already low, but if we move now, we still have a chance to avoid them." Cheri waited several seconds for an answer, only for Sylas to form another set of Runes ahead of them and erase a cluster of Madness Candidates without ever turning his head.

Acolytes... Sylas couldn’t find much reason to care.

He had already killed one Professor and trapped another, so an existence a step beneath them wasn’t enough to make him change directions on its own. Granted, there was an obvious difference between the Professors he had dealt with on the Mortal Plane and whatever standard Legacy used on the Demi-God or God Plane, but the ranking itself was relative.

Back then, those Professors had been just as dangerous to him as these people were supposed to be now.

The real issue wasn’t their Legacy designation. It was that these four were almost certainly Gods, and that alone meant Sylas couldn’t judge them by the same scale as the enemies he had dealt with until now.

Cheri seemed to reach the same conclusion a moment later, and somehow it only made her more anxious.

She had believed herself capable of passing a Gold assessment on the Demi-God Plane, but the man ahead had passed that standard on the God Plane and then advanced beyond it into the ranks of the Acolytes. The gap between those two things wasn’t something she could pretend not to understand.

"Sylas, I’m serious."

He still didn’t answer.

Cheri’s breathing started to quicken.

She had spent too long building toward a future she had barely begun to touch, and the thought of dying here for no reason made something inside her snap loose. She had plans, goals, contingencies layered on contingencies, and every one of them disappeared if Sylas decided to walk directly into the path of four people who could crush her before she understood what happened.

"Do you think I got here for free?" Cheri’s voice rose before she could stop it. "Do you have any idea what I had to do just to stand where I am now?"

Sylas’ gaze remained forward.

"Did you think I wanted to join that guild? Did it look like I enjoyed walking around half naked all the time, smiling at people I wanted nothing to do with just so they would underestimate me?" Her chest heaved as the words began coming faster. "Have you seen me dress like that even once since I left them?"

Fanelei looked over, but didn’t interrupt.

"Do you understand what I had to do to protect myself there? What I had to pretend not to notice, what I had to tolerate, what I had to make people think they could get away with just so I could keep moving forward?"

Cheri’s eyes were beginning to redden.

"And now you want to throw all of that away for what? Your ego? You think you can just keep walking into anything and—"

"Silence."

Sylas’ Will cut through her mind.

Cheri’s entire body shuddered as the pressure passed through her thoughts like a blade, and the redness creeping into her eyes vanished almost immediately. She stumbled half a step before catching herself, her breathing still uneven but her mind suddenly clear enough to realize that not all of what she had just been feeling had belonged to her.

Something had been pushing at the edges of her thoughts.

The fear was hers. The frustration was hers as well, and even now she still believed that crossing paths with the Legacy Acolytes was unnecessarily dangerous, but the speed at which those emotions had spiraled into panic hadn’t been natural.

Cheri swallowed, her gaze shifting toward the endless failed Candidates around them.

Fanelei chuckled.

"Sylas’ patience isn’t endless, you know." She stepped over a corpse split open by one of Sylas’ Runes. "If you keep being annoying, he’ll probably just kill you regardless of whatever plans he has for you."

Cheri looked at her.

"He’d rather bet on himself than drag a liability around, so if you’re going to do the whole running and betrayal thing, you’d better do it now." Fanelei gave her a once-over. "Otherwise, grow a real pair of tits, tighten up your ovaries, and be a real woman."

Cheri’s expression twisted.

"What does that even mean?"

"It means stop whining." Fanelei smiled. "If you want something worth having, you’ll have to risk something worth losing. Nothing comes for free."

Cheri opened her mouth, then closed it again.

She still thought this was insane. That part hadn’t changed.

But when she looked at Sylas again, she realized he hadn’t once sped up, slowed down, or altered his path since spotting Legacy. He wasn’t walking toward them out of anger or pride, and he wasn’t trying to prove anything.

They were simply in his way.

Fanelei looked ahead, her smile widening slightly as the distance between the two groups continued to shrink.

"Oh."

Cheri followed her gaze.

"Looks like we’re going to cross paths soon."